


The Devil's Husband: True Blood

by Saintduma



Series: NaNoWriMo: The Devil's Husband [5]
Category: Original Work, True Blood
Genre: M/M, NaNoWriMo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-07
Updated: 2015-11-07
Packaged: 2018-04-30 09:35:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5158901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saintduma/pseuds/Saintduma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is part of a series done for NaNoWriMo. It is not at all edited. The "chapters" are very short, because they're really just bursts of words, not because they're meant to be full-length chapters by any means. This is primarily just so I can organize them.</p><p>Hael has forgotten more than he remembers... among them someone quite important to Eric.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“You knew him! You knew him and you said nothing to me, for years!”

Hael did not wince even as Eric was snarling inches from his face, his own expression angry as he hit Eric’s chest with the palms of both of his hands, as if he could throw Eric back, but a thousand-year-old vampire Viking was not easily moved, even if Hael was not weak. 

“Of course I knew him!” Hael shouted back at him. “I needed a way out, and he was made sick by what they did. You are his progeny-- do you really think he would think me any less a temptation than you do? Any less a strange prize? And you have known me how long, Eric? Seven, ten years? And you are angry at me for not remembering. You, with your-- your infuriating, unchanging brain, that remembers everything, catalogs it so neatly for you like-- like the most complete book ever written, while I have suffered some nights trying to remember Ginger’s name despite working at her side for all these years. You are angry at me because my memory left decades of my life behind.”

“How many times have I mentioned him to you?” Eric growled.

“How the fuck should I know?” Hael shouted, throwing his arms up. “The only fucking reason I remember your name is because I wake up next to you enough nights!” 

Eric gave an annoyed sound and seemed for a long moment like he would strike Hael, but he took a step back, a clear attempt to contain his rage. It worked for only a moment before he pounded his fist on one of the cocktail tables and it snapped cleanly in half, making Hael jump. 

“Fine,” Hael snapped at him. “If you want to act like a child, you can do it alone.” He grabbed his backpack and stormed towards the door of Fangtasia.

Eric was suddenly there, glaring at him from under his blond hair. 

“You test my patience,” the vampire growled.

“And you test mine,” Hael snapped again. “Now get the fuck out of my way.”

Eric regarded him a moment longer, his anger written clearly across his snarling face, and then he was gone, retreated into the office, door slamming behind him.


	2. Chapter 2

Sookie Stackhouse sipped her cup of coffee, regarding Hael with sympathy on her face.

“You know why he’s so upset with you,” she said, reaching across the table and laying her fingers on his hand. He was as warm as a werewolf, something that always surprised her at first. “It’s coz you’ve got so much history with him in such strange ways and he just don’t know how to deal with you not remembering the important stuff. He’s never had to deal with that kinda thing before.”

“He behaves as though I chose to forget him, Sookie,” Hael replied, his coffee untouched. He wrapped his hand in hers, holding it tightly. Her fingers were so delicate and small, in comparison to Eric’s. “I do not choose. How could I choose to forget someone like Godric?”

“I know you don’t, sweetie,” she said. “And so does Eric. But you know he ain’t rational about his maker.”

“I know,” Hael whispered, his eyes cast down into his coffee mug. “I even understand. From what I remember-- what little I remember-- Godric was unforgettable. He had... something in him, something amazing, something that when you stood with him, you wanted so much to reach inside of him and touch. Something of great value.” 

Sookie squeezed his hand, remembering exactly that.


	3. Chapter 3

Eric found him sitting at the edge of the dock in the lake, looking out over the water in the dark, feet folded neatly up under him, his backpack beside him. The water lapped quietly at the pilings, and despite being completely silent as he moved, Eric knew that Hael knew he had arrived, even though the strange man that had wandered into his bar looking for a job eleven years ago didn’t move.

Eleven years. It had been eleven years, not seven, or ten, and the fact that Hael didn’t know that made him feel guilty for being so angry at him, even though Eric did not feel guilty often. 

Hael surprised him, however, by speaking first. 

“I walked for months,” he murmured. “I do not know how many. It was not flat. There were mountains higher than any I can remember ever seeing. Some of them erupted, all the time, with streams of gas and lava flows that never ended. I think I must have burned myself to my bones a hundred times. There was a steep cliff, and then a gentle slope, for many miles. It was nothing but salt. I did not see humans until I found pilings, great concrete pilings that had once been piers, I am sure, big industrial ones. It must have been Sydney, once, or one of the big cities in Australia. A woman covered in tattoos told me I had walked across what had once been covered in water. She spoke about the oceans like they were mythology. I told her I remembered oceans. I told her about the taste of fish and what it felt like to float in the waves. She thought I was crazy.” 

Hael looked at Eric, as the vampire stood beside him, silent.

“I remember, today, every single detail of that walk. I can remember the months that stretched, and all of the strange things I saw that used to be at the bottom of the ocean. But Eric, I cannot remember what year it was when I first met you. I cannot remember what I bought for Pam, for Christmas, last year. And yesterday you had to help me remember what car was mine in the parking lot at Fangtasia. You know if I could choose what to remember, I would remember Godric.”

“I know.” Eric knelt beside him, and put his long arms around Hael’s shoulders, pulling him close. He hugged the strange man as Hael hugged him back. Eric buried his face in his curly black hair, and for a few minutes, in silence, he let himself miss Godric to the core of his being, miss him so badly that his bones ached, and Hael didn’t say anything. He could feel the weight of that emotion and knew that Eric had to let it settle on his own. There was nothing that he could to to assuage that pain. There was nothing he could do except hold him. Except...

He drew his head back, and looked up at Eric, touching the vampire’s face gently with his too-warm hand, and wiping away a bloody tear, smearing his face with red.

“I need you to do me a favor,” he said in a murmur.


	4. Chapter 4

Hael’s phone buzzed, and the screen lit up with a text message.

‘Check your saved drafts’ it said, except it was written in Norwegian, and for a moment, Hael had no idea what the hell it meant. Or why it was that he could read Norwegian. But he followed the text message’s direction, checking the saved drafts of his email, and found the notes he’d written for himself last night.

Hael was not remembering things well, lately. Things would get worse before they got better, he was certain, as he tried to remember the text message sender, ‘E Northman’, and could only remember cold ocean. 

But at least he had his notes. He was almost done. Then he’d be able to go back to Shreveport.

He wanted to go back to Shreveport.

He had known why he was in Tallahassee, at least. He could feel the darkness of that soul sitting across from him, and he wanted to wipe it off of his skin, where the wirey man had clapped him on the shoulder just a few minutes earlier, and bought him a drink. Hael had appreciated the drink, because it had washed away the lie the man had just told him, about looking for a new friend to spend some quality time with, and every time the man opened his mouth, Hael could taste another lie. The drink was good for washing it away. 

“You’re a bit light-skinned for my type,” the man confessed. His name was Parson. Parson Bridgeworth. “But man, you are beautiful. I like really dark-skinned guys usually, you know?”

Like. Well. It wasn’t really a lie. Maybe that was just his disgust at being near this gross of a human. 

“Where are you from, anyway?” Parson asked, smiling over his beer at Hael. 

“I was born in Estonia,” Hael replied. 

“So you’re Estonian? I didn’t know Estonians were so dark.”

Parson selected first for gay, next for “ethnic”, Parson’s word, not Hael’s, and third for pretty. Hael could feel the racism seething from Parson’s skin. He could feel how much he hated the “ethnic” type. Hated anything not white like himself. Hated them because he was attracted to them, and his belief that they were inferior was so ingrained that he hated himself for being attracted to them. 

Hael didn’t know yet how many men Parson had killed. When he pulled his soul from his body, he would.

“No, I am Roma,” Hael turned his beer in his fingers, not really wanting to share his history with Parson, but he needed him to feel comfortable enough to invite him out of the bar. 

“Like Romanian? Like Vlad the Impaler?” Parson was amused by himself, but Hael’s scowl made him pause a little. “Hey, don’t look so sour, I’m curious, you know? Trying to expand my boundaries.”

“I know.” Hael tried to look forgiving. “It is not easy. But, you know, people are not simply symbols of their race, or their countries. We are just people. Who want to have a beer, with a new friend.” He sipped his, to wash away the lie, and smile a little. 

Parson smiled back, and leaned slightly over the table. “Hey, you wanna get out of here? Buy a six-pack and just chill?”

How many young men had just said yes, and never been seen again?

“Better than sitting here,” Hael smiled more at him. “I think the bartender is staring.”

“He’s staring at you,” Parson said smoothly, and he took Hael’s hand, and tugged him up out of the booth, towards the door. “How pretty you are.”

Hael hated Parson.

They drove, down winding little roads that Hael was sure Parson repeated little parts of to confuse his victims, until they reached a little house perched on a dock at one of the small lakes that littered this part of the South. A ‘camp’, as it was affectionately known by people in the area. Hael had seen them before. He’d lived in one, for a little while, and paid rent to an older woman whose husband had built it, before he’d come to live with Eric. 

He was surprised, for a moment, having remembered the name and the face, and even the way the bedroom looked, and his surprise made him stop, and look distant. Parson tugged his hand. “C’mon,” he said. “I wanna sit on the dock with you.”

“No,” Hael said, less distracted at once. They were in the middle of nowhere. This was where Hael wanted to do this. “Give me the cigarettes.” He indicated with his free hand, two ringed fingers together, a beckoning signal. 

Parson looked at him, confused, for a moment, and dropped Hael’s hand. He shrugged the backpack with the beer off of his shoulder. Hael could perceive so much more in this moment. It had started, and would not be undone, now, the taking of Parson’s black soul. He knew Parson had part of a kill bag in that backpack. He knew also there were cigarettes in there that hadn’t been when they had bought the beer. The cigarettes had appeared in there when Hael had become certain it was time to take his soul.

They always turned up like this.

Parson knew where to find them. He unzipped a compartment, and took them out, handing them to Hael. The pack was slightly squashed, like always, and written in a language Parson couldn’t read. 

“What are you going to do to me?” Parson asked, fear flooding him for the first time as he realized that, for once, he had picked up a larger predator than he was. 

“You know what I am going to do to you,” Hael replied, pulling a cigarette out of the packet. It was wrapped in parchment-colored paper, rather than anything bleached, or otherwise colored. He tucked the rest of the packet into his pocket, and put the cigarette to his lips, and inhaled. The tip of it flared to life, bright cherry illuminating his face in the growing darkness, and as he exhaled, the strong smell of spices dominated any amount of tobacco scent. 

“Please,” Parson whispered, knowing exactly what Hael was going to do, on an instinctual level that all souls like this understood, as soon as they were marked, as Hael had marked him. 

“Please what? Please erase the horrific things you have done?” Hael shook his head, disbelieving. “You are barely thirty. The things I have seen, and forgotten, in my life, they are hundreds of times what you have done, but they do not make your acts any less reprehensible.”

“Why me?” Parson gave a sound very much like a whimper as he spoke. “There are all those vampires out there-- they’ve killed so many more people than me! And tortured them!”

“A vampire does not have a soul like yours,” Hael replied. “Theirs change. They do not taint with murder. They do not become infected, become inverted, the way yours has, unless they do it willingly to themselves, and choose to feel nothing else. You know this. You do not need me to tell you.”

There were truths that simply became... visible. 

“Please,” Parson said again, but this was not a request for mercy. It was a request that it simply be done.

Hael obliged.


	5. Chapter 5

Hael was smoking the rest of his cigarette, sitting in the driver’s seat of Parson’s car. He was parked outside of the bar Parson had picked him up in, near his own car, and he already couldn’t remember the man’s name. All he could remember was that he had what he needed, now, and that someone had visited to give it to him in exchange for Parson’s black soul, and now he had to drive back to Shreveport.

To Eric.

He tossed the keys into the woods behind Parson’s car, and got into his own, snuffing the cigarette before he did. He already did not know where he’d put the rest of the pack, but that, he knew, was normal. It would turn up again, when he needed it. When this started over again. It would, in time. 

The closer to Shreveport he got, as the night wore on into morning, and then into the afternoon, the more that Hael remembered about Eric. About their fights, and how quickly Eric had decided he had to keep him around, even when Hael had started to forget things, had started to wander off. He remembered Eric finding him, and bringing him back to his home, and he remembered that Eric stayed with him all night and well into the day to tell him, to remind him of how many years they had been together. 

Hael’s heart hurt that he had put him through that.

When Eric woke that night, he woke to find that Hael was wrapped in the sheets beside him, quite comfortably asleep with his head tucked into Eric’s arm as he always slept beside him. He smiled, and combed Hael’s curly black hair from his face, grateful to have him back at his side after months of texting him every night, twice a night, to read his drafts. 

Hael had never explained what was in his drafts, what notes he’d left for himself. He’d asked Eric to trust him, and to let him go, to get done what he needed. 

Eric kissed Hael’s freckled cheek as he started to stir, and smiled at him when those black eyes opened, and settled with recognition on Eric’s face. 

“I missed you,” he murmured. 

“I missed you too,” Hael replied, yawning and wrapping his arms around Eric’s waist. 

They fucked, and Hael made himself some dinner, and sat with Eric on the porch, a cup of coffee in his hands. 

It was comfortable. The way it had been for more years than Hael could remember.

“Are you going to tell me where you went? What it was for?” Eric asked.

“No,” Hael replied. “But I’m going to ask you to trust me one more time.” He looked sad, for some reason, and Eric couldn’t tell why. Usually, when Hael was sad, there was some clue. But there was nothing, right now. 

“Are you going away again?” Eric asked. 

Hael sipped his coffee, to avoid a lie, and instead, kissed Eric’s cheek. “In my bag, the one that smells like herbs,” Hael said. “There’s a little leather satchel. Can you bring it to me?”

Eric’s blue eyes examined Hael’s face for a moment longer, and Hael felt him move, and return, and Eric sat beside him again, the leather satchel in his hand.

“What is it?” Eric started to open it.

“Stop,” Hael said, putting his hand over it. “This is where I need you to trust me. When you open it, fill it with your blood. And then bury it, under the window closest to our bed.”

“Hael, have I told you, recently enough that you remember, that you can be really creepy, even to me?” Eric shook his head. But he untied the satchel, carefully, and bit his wrist, filling the small leather bag quickly before the wound healed over, and he disappeared from Hael’s side, to bury it under the light-tight window closest to the bed they slept in every day. 

Hael refused to answer any more questions about the satchel, and Eric let it go, opting instead to pleasure his favorite not-at-all-human lover until Hael slept soundly, and soon it was day.

When Hael woke, it was late afternoon, and there was someone he knew very well standing in the kitchen. When Hael saw him, he immediately started to feel hot tears running down his face, and the person who was not human or vampire closed the distance between them with silent bare feet on the wood, and wrapped his arms around Hael, threading his hot fingers through Hael’s hair. 

“I do not want to go,” Hael said.

“You never do,” his husband said. “You love so well. That is why I love you.”

“I love you too,” Hael murmured, and he wrapped his arms around his husband, and buried his face against his neck. 

When Eric woke, he could feel two things, each absolutely shocking to his system. 

The first was that Hael was gone. Not dead, not distant, but gone. Simply gone. He staggered out of bed, opening the door as if the feeling would simply disappear if he could find where Hael had gone, but the house was silent, and Hael was definitely gone. 

The second was that Godric was alive. And as Eric pulled his maker from the earth under his window, and wrapped him in his arm, it was clear to them both, without a need to speak to confirm, why they had each had the strange man in their lives. He had taken so much pain from them, simply by being part of their lives, and now he had given them back one another. 

They would not let go of one another again.


End file.
